Senate rejects UN treaty for disabled rights in 61-38 vote

Source: The Hill

A United Nations treaty to ban discrimination against people with disabilities went down to defeat in the Senate on Tuesday in a 61-38 vote.

The treaty backed by President Obama and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kansas) fell 5 votes short of the two-thirds needed for confirmation as dozens of Senate Republicans objected that it would create new abortion rights and impede the ability of people to home-school disabled children.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) argued the treaty would infringe on U.S. sovereignty, an argument echoed by other opponents.
“This unelected bureaucratic body would pass recommendations that would be forced upon the United States if we were a signatory,” he said.

Supporters of the treaty argued that the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities would simply require the rest of the world to meet the standards that Americans already enjoy under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.

20. The GOP cuts Social Security, Healthcare and Human Rights every chance they can

I'm sure they've decided that a great many people are not really human, more subhuman. They've got a narrow defintion of what it means to be human, which means they've picked 'us and them.' They are determined to eliminate any commonality between 'us and them.'

5. Senate GOP kills disabilities treaty

By Steve Benen
Tue Dec 4, 2012 1:00 PM EST

Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) made a rare Senate appearance this morning, sitting in a wheelchair just off the floor so that members would have to see him as they entered the chamber. Why? Because they were poised to vote on ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, and Dole hoped to send a message.

It didn't work. The Senate killed the treaty this afternoon, with a final vote of 61 to 38, which seems like a lopsided majority, but which fell short of the two-thirds necessary for ratification. Eight Republicans broke ranks and joins Democrats in support of the treaty, but the clear majority of the Senate GOP voted to block it ...

72. Son's gotta expand his vocab.

7. If only repukes were such isolationists when it came to war.

Disability rights activists worked for years to make this happen. Then Sick Rick Santorum and another religious fanatic (the founder of Patrick Henry College*) jumped in, set up phone banks in megachurches , and poof! All that work down the toilet.

edit: Memo to Harry Reid: When your initial vote on cloture barely gets 60 votes, and you need 66 for final passage, maybe it's not the brightest idea to call for the final vote so soon.

8. Editorioal: Treaty Rights for the Disabled (NYT)

Published: December 3, 2012

... it would encourage other countries to bring their treatment of the disabled up to America’s gold standard, the A.D.A. That is more than enough reason to support it. A broad array of disability-rights groups say also that the treaty’s benefits for disabled Americans traveling abroad, particularly veterans, will be considerable.

Its list of defenders is long and bipartisan, including veterans- and disability-rights groups; the first President Bush; former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh; Senator John McCain; and former Senator Bob Dole, who will be attending a ceremony in Washington before the vote celebrating his advocacy for the disabled. The Senate could do him no greater honor than to ratify this treaty.

The vote is expected to be close, because of an eruption from the right-wing fringe, led by people like Rick Santorum, the former senator, who says the treaty “crushes” American sovereignty and opens the door to bureaucrats taking disabled children from their parents’ arms.

The Senate should ignore such nonsense. America is already ahead of the world on disability rights; it is time for the purveyors of paranoid politics to get out of the way ...

14. I totally agree. I meant usual people who promote the causes of Democratic activists

Look at the MSNBC line up, where were the segments about this. They had time for segments on the 2016 election, but nothing on that. Same for most lefty blogs. Even here on DU, the few threads posted fell within minutes.

10. Uggggh.

I detest such people. I suppose some of it is paranoia about the UN in general - but: you disgusting Republicans, NOT everything is about abortion or religious schooling! Even if you oppose abortion, that's not a reason for rejecting rights for disabled people - or, as in other votes, depriving people of healthcare.

At least I realize on reading it that they needed a 2/3 vote, and that it was 61 for the treaty and 38 against - not, as I thought at first, the other way round; that would have been awful.

24. Yes, but doesn't the treaty set a policy that the US has been following for 2 decades already? n/t

27. Pretty much

So why not sign it? All this does is leave us out of any further discussions regarding implementation. Fortunately, all the other delegates will be able to get to the UN on NYC's ADA-mandated accessible bus system.

16. So

were all 38 Republicans? Now you know what I mean when I say the extreme right wing in Congress. They dictate all our Policies. That is why we are Dysfunctional. They violate sovereign rights every day, so that is just an excuse.

52. NAILED. it. - Whipping the Senate into shape for Rand Paul's Pledge of Allegiance to the NRA. nt

66. "Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) argued the treaty would infringe on U.S. sovereignty.."

The usual "states rights trumps human rights" crowd at world. Fear that the dreaded One World Government will force our government to do things (that are good for actual people) that it does not want to do is a favorite boogey man of the right wing base of the GOP.

38. Even Bob Dole, fresh out of the hospital, couldn't convince the heartless, obstructionist GOP

Former Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole came to the Senate floor Tuesday to make a personal appeal for lawmakers to ratify a United Nations treaty for people with disabilities.

Dole, who was in wheelchair, came to the floor shortly before senators began to vote. Accompanied by his wife, former Sen. Elizabeth Dole, he listened as Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) made a final push for the treaty. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) walked over to greet Dole, smiling and patting Dole’s back.

In a touching moment, Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), who also uses a wheelchair and has publicly urged the Senate to ratify the treaty, joined Dole at one point, holding hands with him as they talked and listened to Kerry.

"The spectacle of Senate Republicans voting against the UN treaty on the rights of the disabled -- and walking past Bob Dole in a wheelchair on their way to do it -- should be news, real and big news."

Dole was on the Senate floor as they cast this vote - you can see him on the right here:

42. Actual Roll call

First, lets HONOR those Seven Republicans who did vote for the treaty (Kirk of illinois did not vote, please note it is 2/3 votes of all Senators WHO VOTED NOT all Senators so Kirk non-vote meant you needed 2/3rd of 99 votes instead of 2/3rd of 100 votes, i.e 66 votes instead of 67). I do not need to name the Democrats, they all voted for the treaty.

45. mean spirited

seems cut and dry. yea or nay. all this bullshit rethug excuse about worrying about a "creeping" 'one world' government being implemented by the voting in of this measure show just how much religion has warped the minds of the human beings in the right wing of our government. Conservatives my ass, snakes is more like it. Their nay vote is truly disgusting. But steph miller is talking about it, so is msnbc, so maybe this will be another nail to be able to send them to a whig graveyard, soon. And they just walked past bob dole. disgraceful. I am truly incensed being partially disabled myself.

73. This was

in my local news paper in North Carolina: N.C. House Leader calls for special session.
North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis asked (Democratic) Gov. Beverly Perdue on Friday to call a special legislative session before the end of the year to fix a budget gap that could cause about 1,400 people with mental illnesses to lose their homes.

The crisis was triggered in July when the Republican-controlled Legislature approved a one-word tweak to the state budget that excluded group homes from nearly $40 million fund intended to cushion the effects if medicaid eligibility changes for programs for the disabled.

Advocates for people with mental illness worry that scores of group-home residents will be dumped in homeless shelters or on streets in the middle of winter. GOP leaders and the Democratic governor had disagreed about how to solve the problem before a Jan. 1 deadline.

Republican Tillis made the move to call a Special Session, five days after an A.P. report on a series of emails showing a top Republican budget writer and his staff had been informed about the potential problem in June, days before their approval of the bill that created the funding gap. In recent months, Republicans including Gov-elect Pat McCrory has sought to pin the blame on the Perdue administration.

What does this have to do with the Topic? This is how the Right wing Republican Party operates. They are our Taliban and they are dangerous to this country. That is the way I see it. These people shouldn't be elected to Congress. It wasn't just Allen West or Todd Akins. These people have no definition of the word compromise.

If somebody like Rachel or ED on MS NBC got hold of a story like this on the current Fiscal talks, the right wing Republican Party will be exposed even more. Medicare and Medicaid are not wasteful spending. They have a useful purpose.

75. My grandmother ran a group home in NC

And my family would have thanksgiving dinner at the home with the residents.

There were eight people who lived in the home, and for most of them their family would visit only once or twice a year, if that. All off the residents were older women, and one person who lived there, Sandy, was blind.

The residents formed a family that cared about and for one another. We got to know each of them as individuals. The group home wasn't just a group house or hotel. It became their home and family in every sense.

But I would never have had exposure to a group home or the people who lived there had my grandmother not started and managed it.

And I believe that's what the GOP takes advantage of - the idea that for most people, the residents were anonymous, faceless and nameless. The GOP speaks about them as a number. Many people don't think about the consequences of reducing funding or eliminating group homes. Like you wrote, many of the residents would be put out on the street or put in a nursing home. The family gets ripped apart. It breaks my heart.

I became friends with Sandy over the years, and we would exchange gifts each Christmas. She passed three years ago, and I miss her.

My blood boils at the callousness and cruelty that defines the modern GOP. Policy has a face, and to republicans, the weakest and neediest in our society are tax burdens to be discarded so the rich will become more wealthy.

61. Explain to me again why we are supposed to rush to compromise with these creatures.

Next Democrat who says 'bipartisanship' in my presence or urges compromise for the sake of compromise will be declared delusional.
The treaty contains nothing that has not been US law since 91 when Republican HW Bush signed our version. A Republican signed it. Yet they voted no. They are vile, vicious hypocrites.